I’m apologizing right away for quoting the musical “Book of Mormon” but I’ve been trying to title this thing for 15 minutes now and I need to get on with my Saturday.

I have a friend from college that ran in the same circles I did. We spent a spring break together one year spreading a cement floor for a mission trip in Mexico. Now, she’s a mother of two and has a blog where she eloquently writes lots of stuff that I agree with. I think she’s come to a lot of the same conclusions I have- but unlike me, she’s somehow been able to hold on to her faith. The following is a response I had to write to her post about being a Christian and affirming/accepting LGBTQI people. It got so long that I decided it wasn’t exactly appropriate to just copy and paste on her Facebook page… so I’m posting it here.

In one of her more recent posts, she writes about things in the bible that mainstream society, including those identifying as Christians, doesn’t include in their own belief system like slavery and, possibly also the condemnation of homosexuality:

“If we believe that God is alive and working today, then we must admit that he is working in this generation, in this time, in our culture. Not that we assume all beliefs are therefore valid because of the time we’re in, but is it possible that certain truths were veiled from humanity in a time where their implementation was not possible?”

And here’s what I have to say:

So mainstream Christian society figures out that they should ignore the verses that condone slavery and not take so seriously the (many) verses which condone the subjugation of women and now, more recently, they can also reinterpret the verses which condemn homosexuality. All the while, these changes are happening because God is allowing it- that he is unveiling the truth to humanity in a time when it can be implemented. Suspend your belief for a moment and look at this suggestion from the point of view of a non-believer (like, say… me). To me, it is very obvious that the interpretation of scripture follows the whims and lessons of society. It’s exceedingly more logical (to me) that these revelations are our own- not something directed by a higher power who inspired the very writings that made us okay with slavery, subjugation of women and homophobia in the first place. You figured these things out on your own. You’re not giving yourself- or society- enough credit. I don’t think you could argue that this wouldn’t have been easier to figure out without the curveball scripture you had thrown at you.

It would be SO much easier for everybody if the bible didn’t actually condemn homosexuality. You know in your own heart that the condemnation is wrong. I applaud the efforts of those who have tried to come up with alternative interpretations of the problem verses, but they’re not all that convincing to me. I think it’s pretty clear what the bible says about homosexuality.

You cited the documentary Dr. Keene did about homosexuality and his church. I was at the convocation at Pepperdine he held in the chapel when people were standing up and reading these verses. He had decided he didn’t want to talk about why he thought the bible didn’t condemn homosexuality and he wanted to focus more on how his church decided to let them be themselves at church. But that’s all everyone wanted to talk about- because if the bible didn’t condemn homosexuality, then we could all be friends again. We all had LGBTQ friends and we really wanted to love them as we loved ourselves. But we really loved God- and we really thought the bible was the word of God. And God must be right. Right?

And that’s just it. You know it’s not right to include “homosexuality” on a list with other sins like lying, cheating and murder. How could you know something God didn’t know? This isn’t something God revealed to you. This is something you discovered for yourself. I’m pretty sure God’s not all like “oooo, let’s see if they get that I didn’t actually mean all that stuff!”

At some point here, you have to concede that the bible is not the end-all-be-all infallible document that we were taught it was. And I think- from reading what you’ve been writing in the past year- that you know that. I appreciate the post about how to reconcile your compassion and your faith and I haven’t read all of the links (and books). The reason I’m writing long-winded posts about this is because this is where it turned for me. It became exceedingly clear that I knew it was wrong to condemn people for things they could not control- be it their sexual preference- or the culture they grew up in (which might not include exposure to Jesus or the opportunity to accept him as a personal savior before dying and being condemned to hell forever) and I refused to believe in a god that did that. And it was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. And I’m still trying to sort out the pieces.

Because there is a large part of me that is spiritual–that’s still seeking… that wants to do good… that wants purpose and meaning in life. And I’m interested in knowing how anybody can still identify as a Christian, but not cling to the tenants of eternal punishment. I don’t think I will ever end up adopting a religion again- but I do believe that many of the principles (doing good) and many parts of the culture (helping others /community) are important. And lacking in my life in particular.

And I’m going to try to keep having these discussions- because people are dying at the hands of other people with these deeply-held fundamentalist beliefs. It’s absolute madness. It’s absolute lack of reason. And although I do not identify with Christianity any more- it’s still my alma mater. I feel like my former homies need to be the ones to step up and condemn violence and hatred. They need to be the ones shouting about peace, love, forgiveness and acceptance. Not about marriage rights and bathroom privileges.

When I ask people this question, they usually say something like the Holocaust, WWII in general, September 11th… All of the events have something in common: they are all events in which a large number of people died. So the measure of how bad an event is is how many people die. Furthermore- the person or people who allow these horrible things to happen are evil and wrong- no matter what their philosophy was or how right they may have been in some ways.

This was a truth that I confronted my senior year at Pepperdine. People who kill large amounts of people are evil and wrong, no matter the reason why.

We were reading Elie Wiesel’s Night in my 20th Century European History class and discussing the scene in which he describes bodies being thrown into furnaces. And I couldn’t help but be reminded of that thing I said I believed in… hell.

And I said- to a class of 20 people or so- something like “This indiscriminate killing of masses of people is so fundamentally wrong and it’s not even as bad as what we believe hell is like and if God allows this to happen to thousands of people then I can’t believe in God anymore.” My professor asked me to stay after class. He was concerned.

Something had snapped. In my mind, I was confronted with the faces of the billions of people who had died before me who had not confessed Jesus as their personal savior and who would be suffering fates worse than death. And that they had to suffer because this really nice, loving God said so. It was absurd and it simply could not be true.

I couldn’t believe in hell anymore. And I couldn’t believe in a God who would allow his creation to suffer an unimaginable fate for all of eternity because they got it wrong.

After this realization, the rest of my faith unraveled. It didn’t happen all at once, rather, the spiritual world that I had believed in crumbled slowly- piece by piece- over the course of several years. It was as if a stone veil was chipped away from my eyes- and I saw more and more holes in the story I had once clung to so strongly.

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” – Matthew 5:21-22

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” Matthew 5:38-40

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” –Matthew 5:43-45

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” –Matthew 7:12

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Luke 6:37

“When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’” – John 8:7

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8

“ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[d] says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”[e]

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12:14-21

On Memorial Day, instead of being snarky like me, I believe Jesus would acknowledge the grief of those who had lost loved ones in war. He would “mourn with those who mourn.” But he wouldn’t condone war itself. He for sure wouldn’t thank people for going to die to “protect America’s freedom.” And he definitely would not post cheesy memes on Facebook like this:

My incredible parents flew down to LA to take care of my one-year-old so the hubby and I could get away for a few days. And it was heaven. I am an incredibly fortunate person is all I gotta say. I’ve had a lot of people with kids tell me “Oh wow, we never got to do that…” and that’s including people who live in the same city as their parents. And I planned all of this.

But this post is about planning and how I’m bad at it. Just writing that last sentence made my entire body tense up. The idea of looking ahead into the future and trying to anticipate my needs sends me reeling into anxiety waves.

Forget the Big Planning- the stuff of retirement saving and investments- right now, I’m talking about packing a bag for a long weekend. I have a tendency to over-pack when I pack for vacations. “If I pack all these outfits, then I’ll have time to wear them,” my brain says… I have a hard time planning what to do in the time I have on vacation- if I pick one thing to do, it excludes all the other things and makes me feel like I have less time.

Meal-planning takes me FOREVER. And I really only grocery-shop for dinners. I have been incapable of orchestrating lunches for myself or my husband. I try to picture myself during the work week and what I might want to eat and my head kind of explodes.

I leave all school projects to the last minute. Any time I try to sit down and figure out what needs to be done when, I start to panic and quickly distract myself with something else… washing dishes, for instance.

And this happens with everything… taxes, signing up for healthcare, getting the house clean for guests… And while I was thinking about this post, I thought it might be connected to my religious past which told me that life on earth didn’t matter so my attention was continually focused on being as close to God as possible- listening to songs that said things like “Don’t worry about tomorrow, he’s got it under control.” I would just expect things to work out on their own.

Things do work out on their own a lot… I always get the projects in on time, the house gets clean enough, I don’t starve to death, healthcare expenses don’t bankrupt me, the rent is always paid… But I also don’t have any savings and I’m saddled with a huge amount of credit card and student loan debt… the idea of “making a plan” to get out of this scares the crap out of me. It’s like the big version of when I have so much to do, I’m afraid of making the to-do list because I”m just going to figure out that I don’t have enough time to do anything. I’m afraid to make a plan because I’ll figure out that I’m going to be miserable for the rest of my life. That’s irrational. But that’s what’s happening in my brain. Planning is hard and scary and something I have to work on.

Last weekend, I went to Sunday Assembly to hear Ryan Bell speak. He is a former 7th-Day Adventist pastor who decided to take a year (all of 2014) to live as if there was no god. He documented the whole thing in a blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearwithoutgod/ and, much to his surprise, he ended up with lots and lots of followers.

Needless to say, in 2014, he figured out that “God” was a human creation and not the other way around.

I introduced myself to Ryan after assembly (and after weaving through the large herd of people waiting to speak to him) and briefly nutshelled my religious background: I was a Christian for a large part of my life and when I discovered that the Christian story wasn’t true, I was devastated. I had believed that the creator of the universe knew who I was, loved me, had a plan for me and was going to let me live with him in heaven forever. It was a huge, awful thing to lose. I went through years of depression. I contemplated suicide. I’m just now beginning to come out of that depression and I’m trying to find a way to be okay again- and a way to honor this large spiritual part of myself that’s still here, even though I don’t believe in a “god.”

He asked me how long it had been since I’d made this discovery. I had to think about it. It’s been at least ten years.

He asked me if I’d read his cnn.com article: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/08/opinion/bell-god-atheism/index.html I hadn’t, so he went on to tell me about how the Christian story is one that encourages a kind of nihilism about the life we have on earth and that was most likely a large element of my depression. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about until I went home and read the article and realized he had hit on something pretty significant.

Christians think they’re going to live forever so this causes them to be not as concerned about their actual daily lives. They’ll say things like they’re “not of this world.” (Like in John 17:16 , Jesus says, talking about his disciples “They are not of the world even as I am not of it”). They sing songs with lyrics that say things like “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through.”

In the CNN article, Ryan Bell wrote that “…nihilism is a disease born of theism” meaning that belief in God causes the believer to think their life (on Earth) is meaningless- or at least, much less meaningful than the eternal life they’re going to spend in heaven. I don’t know that I’d want to 1. call nihilism a disease or 2. call Christians nihilists because of all the connotations that might come with that term, but I do agree with where he’s going. I had grown up believing that “this life” didn’t matter. Anything that happened in “this life” was all a part of “God’s plan” so I didn’t have to have much responsibility for what I did with my time here on Earth. My reason for living- for all of those years- was to do God’s bidding.

I remember the day that I decided that hell couldn’t exist. My belief in heaven quickly dissolved after that. It was ten minutes before my “Christianity in Contemporary Culture” class at Pepperdine (it was called something like that… we watched movies and listened to music and tried to draw Christian themes from them whether they were there or not) and I could not think of one single reason to go. I couldn’t think of any reason to do anything. I was paralyzed. If my beautiful eternity with God that I’d been preparing for wasn’t going to happen- then what was the point? Anything I did ever was going to be absolutely meaningless. I started thinking about the easiest and least painful way to kill myself.

I was sitting on the floor of my dorm room, facing my bed. My bed was covered with a large blanket I’d knitted the previous year with the scraps of yarn I had left over after making scarves to raise money for a mission trip. I reached out and grabbed the blanket and thought “This is here because I made it.” I took my knitting needles and a ball of yarn with me to class. Someone asked me what I was making. I said, “I’m proving my existence to myself.” They didn’t ask what I meant… probably because I sounded like a lunatic.

Ryan Bell says that you can create meaning in your life- that it doesn’t have to come from someone or something outside yourself. He’s more evolved than me, I guess. I can see how things might be personally meaningful to me though. I made that blanket- and that was meaningful to me. That was one tiny meaning that made me believe there were other things I could do that mattered- and that was enough to keep living- and going to class.

I’m resentful that there is no deep meaning or story that explains why the human race exists, though. To let go of that and pursue nothing but personal meaning for me is something I have to settle for, I guess. And that’s exactly what it feels like… settling.

I usually get some kind of writing done during the holidays because I am relieved of at least one of my many commitments and because holidays make me even more introspective than I usually am. So… super duper mega introspective.

One year- the only guy I was interested in in college compared my holiday blog posts to David Sedaris’s essays. I almost exploded and then googled David Sedaris. Now here I am years later and very familiar with David Sedaris and I’ll say that I will be so lucky if my writing will ever, ever, ever veer in the direction of David Sedaris’s brilliance.

I’ll be a blogger in my next life. I’ll be a blogger who gets a book deal. And then I’ll be a paleoanthropologist… but that’s another post. I really would love to write more…. I have thoughts all day that I’d love to record, but Apple has yet to make a device that connects directly to my brain. The devices I have now are always left on a counter or under a mountain of laundry when I’m inspired. So I’m left in front of my computer wracking my brain about what it was that made me have that thought “Aha! That would be great to put down in the blog!”

Today it had something to do with my favorite professor… he taught European History in the 20th Century. It was the way he said “ubiquitous.” I think about Dr. Zalar every time I hear or think of the word. He used it to describe the lice which WW2 soldiers had to deal with… “ubiquitous lice.” He had a tendency to over-enunciate multisyllabic words.

That class was one in the series my senior year which greatly contributed to the downfall and eventual abandonment of my Christian faith- and that has nothing to do with ubiquitous lice, but that’s where my mind went today. We were having a class discussion about Elie Wiesel’s Night. It was something about his description of the fire… the furnaces… something like that… and the awful reality that is thousands of people killed. Killing people is wrong. Killing thousands of people is really, really wrong. Yet, here I was, believing that if an individual dies without 1. confessing Jesus and his/her personal savior and 2. being baptized, then that person will suffer a fate- at the hands of God- much worse than the fires of the concentration camps. We’re talking the entire human race except for the handful of people born at the right time and into the right culture that would expose them to Christianity and compel them to follow it.

The concept of killing-lots-of-people-because-you’re-right-and-they’re-wrong has historical precedent. This is the kind of thinking which is characteristic of only the most notoriously evil players of history.

I said something like this in class. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but it ended with “If that’s the way God is, then I don’t believe in God.”

Dr. Zalar asked me to stay after class. I think he might have been worried that he’d caused a previously zealous follower of Jesus to turn atheist. Wouldn’t look great for a professor trying to get tenure at a Christian university… Or maybe he was genuinely concerned… He wanted to share with me a sermon he’d written about loving people “in the particular”- how it’s harder to love one person than it is to have fuzzy feelings about a huge group of people (i.e. the “flood victims” or “the homeless”). It’s also much harder to hate someone you know than it is to hate a huge group of people you’ll never meet (i.e. “the gays”).

Humans have an ability to generalize large sums of people. It’s necessary in order to remain focused on anything- we have to put the population of the world into 3-4 manageable brain files and focus our energy on those closest to us. This is a good function to have when maintaining relationships with family and friends. It’s pretty awful though when it’s also used to justify/forget about torturous things done to masses of humans you don’t know. It’s the function that allows gigantic, unspeakable things to happen. It allows war. It also allows poverty and hunger. It causes religious institutions to close their doors and arm their members. It allows things like Gods who send their children to hell and/or kill them in a worldwide floods.